Authors who mass review their own book

I had a friend whose son wrote a book. I bought it and read it, and agreed to post a review. The scales fell from my eyes when I went to Amazon and all the reviews were from variations on my friend's and his wife's names. It's a cheap shot in my book. I wrote an honest review, but felt slimy at being nebulous on the books (many) shortcomings.

I will never review the book of someone I know again. I will never ask anyone to review my books.

I think new authors put too much stock in reviews away. The effect on sales must be very slight. If someone is looking for my book it's because they've already been told about it, and the review won't really matter.

I don't rate or review my work, and I get friends and family to avoid it all costs. Those I've got up on Amazon (a modest ten) are those from reviewing sites that picked up the book, or readers from goodreads that post on both Goodreads, amazon etc. I've never encouraged anyone to post to anywhere.

I have, however, been asked to review and post a signal review on a number of sites, and then kindly, in their words, "provide all the links to the places suggested" to "save" their time finding them... Slightly annoying as I like to post under my own steam, not given a list.

Zefiris said:

Anyone else hate when you see this happening. I'm looking for books to buy and stumbled across one with 24 reviews on Amazon, mostly 5 star.

Check the reviews, turns out the majority have left just ONE review and it's for this book with a few others having left reviews for this book and the authors other books. Some sounding obviously fake by throwing in the line "I've loved such and suchs other books and couldn't wait to read this!" even though he's an unknown author.


Maybe I'm wrong and the reviews are legit... but the fact a lot of the reviewers haven't reviewed any other books on Amazon just sets my alarm bells ringing that the author... or at least friends and family, have been spamming positive reviews.

It annoys me

Click to expand...

Sadly it happens a lot. And generally when it does the book is pretty substandard and often self published. It really doesn't help anyone to try and artificially inflate ratings.

It's usually pretty easy to spot too - as you say they are almost always 5 star, pretty vague, and the reviewer will have only reviewed one or two books. Usually the reviews come in waves as well - there will be a handful all for the same day, then nothing for a day, then another wave of them. That's not fooling anyone either.

I'm surprised that Amazon doesn't have something in place to prevent too many accounts being opened from the same computer.

I know it's not an accurate way of telling whether reviews are fake or not, but Amazon has started noting whether a book's purchase has been verified.

I find it a teensy bit easier to trust the reviewers who you know have actually dished out money on the book than the ones who possibly haven't. Also, if you've got a bajillion good reviews but very few of those are verified purchases, well... it's unlikely that so many people would be spending time on Amazon when they don't even use it.

johnhallow said:

I know it's not an accurate way of telling whether reviews are fake or not, but Amazon has started noting whether a book's purchase has been verified.

I find it a teensy bit easier to trust the reviewers who you know have actually dished out money on the book than the ones who possibly haven't. Also, if you've got a bajillion good reviews but very few of those are verified purchases, well... it's unlikely that so many people would be spending time on Amazon when they don't even use it.

Click to expand...

I've seen for myself self-published authors offering to send people the money to buy their book of Amazon so it can be reviewed as a "verified purchase". There's been so much gaming of the system at Amazon that I don't trust reviews there by people I don't know, and the people I do know is usually bloggers who are re-posting reviews from their blog. I.e. reviews I have already read.
In the last year or so I've seen more and more people catching on to the fact that Amazon's reviews aren't very trustworthy. I know Amazon has taken a few steps to address that, but there's usually a new scheme to game the system waiting in the wings.
I think Amazon reviews are becoming less and less relevant, except to those readers who only get book information from Amazon and their forums.

johnhallow said:

I know it's not an accurate way of telling whether reviews are fake or not, but Amazon has started noting whether a book's purchase has been verified.

I find it a teensy bit easier to trust the reviewers who you know have actually dished out money on the book than the ones who possibly haven't. Also, if you've got a bajillion good reviews but very few of those are verified purchases, well... it's unlikely that so many people would be spending time on Amazon when they don't even use it.

Click to expand...

This idea that someone should write an Amazon review only if they bought the book from Amazon is rubbish. Someone shouldn't be excluded from posting a review on Amazon if they acquired the book at a bookshop, as an ARC from the publisher, as a gift from someone else, as a loan at a library, etc.

Those who want to game the system will always figure out new ways to do so. Excluding a group of legitimate reviewers doesn't solve the problem.

Weirdmage said:

and the people I do know is usually bloggers who are re-posting reviews from their blog. I.e. reviews I have already read.

Click to expand...

Doesn't Amazon claim the rights to the reviews? How does that work if the review is copied from a blog? Not that there would likely ever be a dispute, but it's something to think about.

Chris P said:

Doesn't Amazon claim the rights to the reviews? How does that work if the review is copied from a blog? Not that there would likely ever be a dispute, but it's something to think about.

Click to expand...

Not according to this. But they do grab rights according to this (scroll down the page a bit). Although I've never heard of Amazon using those rights. (I do however know they grabbed pieces of reviews on blog to use as blurbs on their sales pages, but I think they stopped that almost at once. There was certainly a lot of people who didn't like that who where pretty vocal.)
Legally, I don't think they can do anything they claim the rights to without you having to OK it every time you review, and as far as I know it would still be sketchy. (Note: IANAL.) -Apart from that, it would of course be PR suicide. And they would lose any future reviews re-posted by bloggers, I doubt they want that.

ETA: Not that it's an issue for me, I haven't used any money on Amazon, and you have to do that before you are allowed to review there.

Chris P said:

I think new authors put too much stock in reviews away. The effect on sales must be very slight. If someone is looking for my book it's because they've already been told about it, and the review won't really matter.

Click to expand...

Hmm, I don't know if I agree with this. I tend to look up books on Amazon using the genre search or "top sellers" search and then look at the "Customers who bought this also bought this" list. So most of the time, I buy a book not because someone I know recommended it to me, but because it has many good reviews that sound legit.

johnhallow said:

I know it's not an accurate way of telling whether reviews are fake or not, but Amazon has started noting whether a book's purchase has been verified.

I find it a teensy bit easier to trust the reviewers who you know have actually dished out money on the book than the ones who possibly haven't. Also, if you've got a bajillion good reviews but very few of those are verified purchases, well... it's unlikely that so many people would be spending time on Amazon when they don't even use it.

Click to expand...

Ehh...for some reason, even though I buy most of my books on Kindle, it doesn't "click" with my Amazon account, so none of my reviews ever have the "verified Amazon purchase" thing. And I agree that it's ridiculous to dismiss the validity of reviewers who buy their books elsewhere.

I like to read the 4 and 3-star reviews because I find them to be the most well thought-out in general. There's less of a "OMG YOU HAVE TO READ IT" and more of a "I really liked this and here's why. You may not like if you don't like (example)" feel with 4 and 3-star reviews which I've found to be quite accurate.

Putputt said:

Hmm, I don't know if I agree with this. I tend to look up books on Amazon using the genre search or "top sellers" search and then look at the "Customers who bought this also bought this" list. So most of the time, I buy a book not because someone I know recommended it to me, but because it has many good reviews that sound legit.

Click to expand...

But what are the odds that a book whose only reviews are planted by friends and family will show up on the "people who bought this also bought..." list? I imagine a book would have to be selling and been reviewed pretty well already that a handful of plants aren't going to turn the trick.

I was looking at one yesterday actually. It was a self-published book, with a lot of 4 & 5 star reviews. I read through a few and they pinged my "dodgy" radar, because many used the same phrases - like they'd been given a list to sprinkle in - and were oddly unspecific about details of the book. They were a bit like the dodgy hotel reviews or those spam comments that I get on my blog, telling me in strange English that my blog entry is the greatest thing they've ever read on the subject (shame they are sometimes commenting on an attachment page, so the "post" is just a picture) without mentioning any specifics about the post.

I didn't investigate any more, I wasn't that interested, but it shows that my mindset now is to view all reviews as dodgy unless proved legit.

Chris P said:

But what are the odds that a book whose only reviews are planted by friends and family will show up on the "people who bought this also bought..." list? I imagine a book would have to be selling and been reviewed pretty well already that a handful of plants aren't going to turn the trick.

Click to expand...

Not sure about the odds of that, but you're probably right about books that sell well appearing more often. I thought you were referring to reviews in general being not very important on Amazon.

Anywho, I know this is pretty terrible, but I have at times not bought a book because it has too few reviews on Amazon. Unless the premise and the first few pages really capture me, I don't usually buy books with fewer than 100 reviews...

Putputt said:

I like to read the 4 and 3-star reviews because I find them to be the most well thought-out in general. There's less of a "OMG YOU HAVE TO READ IT" and more of a "I really liked this and here's why. You may not like if you don't like (example)" feel with 4 and 3-star reviews which I've found to be quite accurate.

Click to expand...

Same here. I tend to read the 3 and 4-star reviews. Occasionally, I read the 1-star reviews too and have found them helpful.

I don't even read reviews, and if I did, I sure wouldn't read any on Amazon. I don't care how many times a writer reviews his own book. If I did read reviews, it would be only those on actual review sites, written by reviewers I trust.

Finding good books is easy. I know enough readers who are friends to trust their judgment, I know how to find which books are selling well in any genre, and I know how to find good books randomly. I find far more good books that I can possibly read, so why bother reading reviews from a source I can't possibly trust?

I've seen cases where the only Amazon review (and apparent sale) was from a verified purchase - by the author.

I just disregard any review, anywhere, that's vague squee. Or vague anti-squee, for that matter.

I completely agree with this thread. And so glad someone brought this up. I know someone who self pubbed a series, and their grammar is just atrocious. (I'm sorry, but if you can't even spell correctly on your Facebook profile bio, or website, or your own review, that's a problem). Then the author had their mom, other relatives, and friends review it 5 stars. I get as a self pubbed author you need to promote your book as best you can, but I don't think this is the way.

The blurb and look inside feature are what sells books to me, not reviews from someone I don't know.

I love the look inside feature, and I wish more new writers would use it before submitting their work to dodgy publishers. A company that releases books full of clumsy writing, typos and grammatical errors isn't one you want to be associated with.

Some time ago I saw a book that was put out by a vanity press but had over 150 reviews. Most were from posters called "Anonymous" and there were several common themes in the the reviews: references to Harry Potter and Twilight, assurances that the spelling and grammar errors didn't interfere with the readers' enjoyment, and claims that the book should be made into a movie.

Oh, the reviews were vague. They mentioned the main characters and the fact that there was a fight scene and some romance. That was it. But they filled in the gaps with adjectives. Miraculous, intense, spectacular, incredible, wondrous, uplifting, stellar, exceptional, phenomenal... it's as though each review was trying to outdo the previous one.

Haha, I remember Robert Stanek's fake reviews on Amazon. The dude wrote like 200 of those. And his 'books' are so horrible they can barely be called books. To me, it would be more funny than anything, except that those were supposed to be fantasy books for children and some innocent people (parents, librarians) suffered. Not cool.

Actually I always wonder about authors reviewing their own books. Not mass reviewing, just reviewing. I've seen Goodread authors giving their books 5 stars and saying stuff like "I wrote it, so obviously I love it!" What's the point?

Chris P:
Doesn't Amazon claim the rights to the reviews? How does that work if the review is copied from a blog? Not that there would likely ever be a dispute, but it's something to think about.

Click to expand...

Depends on the jurisdiction but I'd be surprised if they ever enforced any rights that they claimed because that would make them a publisher (at least for UK internet law purposes) and therefore potentially liable for any libellous statements made in them.

MM

Ugh. I hate fake reviews

If I can't look inside a book, I like to read 4/5-star and 1-star reviews to get a good idea of whether I might like a book or not. Having these sorts of fake reviews really irritates me because I'm not getting a completely accurate view of things. When this happens, I'm too annoyed to read any more reviews and will often not buy the book at all.

Trust that most readers aren't stupid and can spot the obviously questionable reviews, too. If not, there's the sample that will often belie all the good things the reviewers have to say.

Other people's fake reviews don't affect me, so I don't worry about it. I've never bought or passed by a book based on its reviews, so as a reader I still don't worry about it.